The final year of my master’s program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling involved an internship in clinical settings. I served part of my hours at a grief counseling center helping to run two grief support groups. I thought I already knew a lot about grief through my many years as an Episcopal priest, but I discovered that I had much to learn. One lesson I took away from my time in the grief center was that grief, like everything else in life, occurs on a spectrum from completely uncomplicated to totally and completely complicated. How complicated or uncomplicated your grief is will greatly determine the severity and flavor of your grieving process. There are many factors that go into determining how complicated your grief will be: your own mental health, the circumstances of the death of the one for whom you are grieving, the qualities of the relationship you had with that person, how much loss you’ve already experienced in your life and how recent that loss was are just a few factors that affect the grieving process. I’ll give you a few examples to illustrate what I am talking about.
A person who is grieving whose grief might be described as uncomplicated would be a woman whose 95-year-old mother died from age-related conditions after living a long and mostly happy life. The mother and woman had what both would describe as a good and healthy relationship which evolved over their many years together as both mother and daughter changed and matured. The daughter herself has had what she would describe as a mostly happy life and her mental health has always been good. She was able to be at her mother’s side during the last few days of her life, and she is confident that her mother could feel her presence and her love. The woman has some days in which she cries a lot, but most days her sadness is less than her happiness for the relationship she had with her mother and the good life her mother led. She is glad that her very independent mother, who had grown very dependent upon others in the last few years of her life, is now free from old age and pain. This is uncomplicated grief.
Now let me share a few stories of complicated grief (these are true stories by the way). A man had an adult son who had injured his back. The son was in a lot of pain and couldn’t get an appointment with his doctor for a week and a half. The father had some leftover muscle relaxants that helped him when he hurt his back. The son had never taken them before, but since they had helped his father, he took one when his father offered them to him. The son went to bed that night and died in his sleep because unbeknownst to him he was allergic to this medication. The father blamed himself for his son’s death no matter what anyone says to him. The father’s grief is extremely complicated.
Or there is the woman whose husband, who she loved dearly, frequently travelled for work. The morning of one of his work trips she and her husband had an argument that was still unresolved when he left for his trip. Her last words to him were biting and sarcastic. An hour after he was due to land at his destination, she received a phone call from the police that he had collapsed and died in the airport of what appeared to be a major heart attack. The woman had great difficulty dealing with her regret for her words before her husband died. Her grief is complicated.
Or there are the followers of a man named Jesus, a 30-something charismatic religious leader who had shown them a new way to live and given them a new hope for their lives and for the world. This man pushed the secular and religious leaders just a little too far with his vision for the world and he was executed as a terrorist and insurgent. They were so scared when he was arrested that they ran away and weren’t even there to see him die. After his death they had some strange experiences in which he was among them not as a ghost but as a fully human and alive being. He told them that he was empowering them to go out into the world to continue his work. What were they to do? They were sad. They were confused. They were afraid. Their grief was complicated.
And for one of these followers his grief was even more complicated. Peter is perhaps the most visible disciple/apostle in all of the Gospels. He clearly held a prominent leadership role in the early community of Jesus-followers. I love that the Gospels portray him in all his glory and all his failures. We have a very human picture of Peter. He was a hero of our faith, but not a perfect hero, making him someone we can learn from and whose example we can follow. Because, when we are honest with ourselves, we too are a complicated mix of hero and coward, success and failure, love and sin. And he had very good reasons to be experiencing complicated grief after Jesus’ crucifixion.
In case you don’t know the particulars of Peter’s story or have perhaps forgotten, I’m going to take a moment to tell his tale. In the Gospel of John, Peter first meets Jesus in chapter 1. His brother Andrew meets Jesus first and is so impressed by this man that he runs to get Peter and to bring him to meet Jesus. During their very first encounter, Jesus renames the man named Simon, Peter. Peter then joins the band of followers surrounding Jesus. The first time he speaks is in chapter 6. Jesus has just given a long teaching in which he has referred to himself as “the bread of life.” He refers to his own flesh and blood as bread and drink for the world. This is a disturbing statement to many listening that day, and many ceased to follow him. Jesus turned to his inner circle of 12 followers, one of whom was Peter, and asked, “Do you also wish to go away?” and Peter answered, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Good and faithful words.
Next, we hear from Peter at the Last Supper, Jesus’ meal with his friends and followers the night before he is put to death. Recall that Jesus takes the radical action of washing his followers’ feet in order to teach them about love. Peter finds this deeply offensive and says to Jesus, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (John 13:6-9). Peter is not shy, quiet or reticent. He is quick to speak and to act, even when he doesn’t fully understand.
Later in that same meal, after Judas Iscariot has left to betray Jesus, Jesus tells them that he will be with them only a little while longer. Peter says what everyone was probably thinking, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” And Jesus doesn’t say, “thank you” or “I admire your loyalty,” but instead predicts Peter’s failure: “Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” (John 13:36-38) But before he denies Jesus, Peter does appear to try to live into his heroic side and gets rebuked by Jesus for his attempt. When Judas comes with the soldiers and police to arrest Jesus, Peter draws his sword and cuts off the ear of the priest’s slave. Jesus turns to Peter and says, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (18:11). Peter just can’t seem to get anything right.
The soldiers and police take Jesus to Caiaphas the high priest for questioning. Peter follows at a distance and remains outside in the courtyard standing by a charcoal fire warming himself. He is recognized three times by people standing with him and three times when asked “You are not also one of the man’s disciples, are you?” Peter replies, “I am not.” After his third denial, Peter hears the cock crow. (John 18) And the next day Jesus is crucified and dies. And Peter, though present with the other grieving disciples and the first to enter the empty tomb, does not speak again until our Gospel reading for today. He is uncharacteristically silent. He sees the empty tomb and the burial clothes lying there. He is a witness to Jesus’ resurrection appearances. He receives the Holy Spirit from Jesus and yet this extraverted, outspoken follower of Jesus says nothing. Finally, he says to the other disciples, “I am going fishing.” (John 21:3) This man of action may not be able to speak, but he can’t just sit still. He has to do something. So, he returns to the only thing he knows how to do, fishing. Sometimes when we are at our lowest, action that is comfortable and familiar is the best thing we can do. It gets us out of our heads and allows an opening for God.
Peter is a grieving man and his grief is complicated. Things between him and his beloved friend, teacher, and messiah did not go well before Jesus died. He desperately wanted to see Jesus, we know this from the stories of his race with the beloved disciple to the empty tomb and from our reading for this morning with his impetuous leap into the lake when the beloved disciple recognizes Jesus standing on the shore. Peter wants a relationship with Jesus. But he is stuck in his regret, sin, and grief. He can’t move forward, and he can’t go back. And Jesus knows this and loves him into new life.
Jesus draws Peter away from the others and leads him to the healing and relationship that Peter so desires. And in doing so, he restores Peter to the community and enables Peter to become the leader the community needs. This story is often referred to as Jesus’ forgiveness of Peter, but nowhere in the story does it say that Jesus asks Peter to confess or offer Peter forgiveness. What he does is love Peter and teach him about love. He allows Peter to forgive and love himself. And in so doing, Jesus helps Peter to be the Peter that Jesus always knew he could be and the community needs him to be. Now, this does not mean that Peter became perfect. Far from it. As the story of the early church continues in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is still outspoken. He is still impulsive. He gets muddled from time to time, but he also loves his community and leads them in faithfully following Jesus. Indeed, he is so faithful that in the end he does lay down his life for Jesus in martyrdom, as Jesus predicts in our reading for today.
We may or may not be as extroverted or impetuous as Peter, but we all have regrets, we have all failed, we all have things that we have done or have happened to us that cause us to get stuck and keep us from being the human being God is calling us to be. And Jesus loves us just as he loved Peter in all his messy humanness. Jesus met Peter where he was in his regret and shame in the midst of fishing and around another charcoal fire and offered him healing and love. Jesus meets us where we are in our everyday messiness and existence and offers us healing and love.
That woman I told you about who argued with her husband before he unexpectedly died? She was unable to go to church for a few years but finally found her way back. Through the love and care of the community and a grief support group, she came to understand and forgive herself and she became a very active leader of a grief support group for widows. Many people have found new life and healing through her work. The man who gave his son the medicine that caused his death? After much therapy and support from his grief support group he forgave himself and became very active in a nationwide grief organization for people who have lost children. He is a source of comfort, support, and new life for many many people.
And Jesus said to him, “Do you love me?. . . Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17) Amen.
